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Re: Debian/Stretch: how to boot in text mode



On Wed, Feb 01, 2017 at 09:21:16PM +0100, Ennio-Sr wrote:
> After upgrading to Stretch I'm unable to find a way to boot with no GUI.
> I tried setting 'GRUB-GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX="text" in /etc/default/grub,
> moving to 'K01gdm3' all 'S??gdm3' instances in /etc/rc?.d, but nothing
> happens.
> Any help, please?

The easiest way is to remove whatever display manager is running by
default.  This works in every version of Debian and is super easy.

However, some people want to keep the display manager installed, but
prevent it from running at boot time.  This is much more difficult
and will involve understanding how your init system works.

In jessie and stretch, the default init system is called "systemd".
It doesn't use /etc/rc*.d/[KS]* symlinks to control services.  Instead,
you use commands to control it:

systemctl status gdm3
systemctl disable gdm3
systemctl stop gdm3

and so on, where "gdm3" is the name of the service that you want to
manage.  See "man systemctl" for some more details on that particular
command, or "man systemd" for a more general starting point.

There may even be some special magic required for display managers,
above and beyond the init system.  If systemctl disable doesn't work,
then report back and let us know which DM it is.  Maybe someone will
know the magic involved in disabling it.

... or you could just remove the package.  That will always work.


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